As he launched into a speech titled 'Science is Borderless' at the premier tech school, the 1,000-strong audience heard him with rapt attention, their eyes flitting from the dimunitive man standing behind a laptop at the podium, and the large screen behind where a powerpoint presentation stressed the points he made in bullets and illustrated them graphically.

No seat was available in the 500-seat auditorium, and students sat in the aisles, along the sides and stood at the rear. A hundred more seats had been placed in front of a large screen outside the venue.

The arrival of the president was seemingly a much-awaited event at the FIT, which has some 6,500 students on its rolls, some 100 of them of Indian origin.

The president is on a fortnight-long, four-nation tour of Europe. He has already been to Russia and will proceed to Iceland and Ukraine after his Swiss visit.

Kalam, who arrived at the FIT in the morning, was taken on a tour of the institute and spent considerable time at the Brain and Mind Laboratory and the lab for nanotechnology, an area that he is intensely interested in.

The president touched upon themes he loves to focus on, such as the need for convergence of IT, biotechnology and nanotechnology, the scientific and political greats who have changed the course of history and the power of youth to transform the world.

"Youth have great power," he said. "In India, of our one billion people 540 million are under the age of 25. Great things will happen when" the youth work for society, he added.

Kalam extolled the power of science to bring positive change in the world, citing the example of nuclear energy. "We can make electricity from nuclear energy. Also the bomb... All technology is harmless, but the user has to be good."

The students who heard the 30-minute speech gave the president a standing ovation, and clearly went away impressed by the scientist-president.

Sebastian Pittet, a student of communications engineering whose mother is Indian, said he enjoyed the speech as it felt as if it had been delivered from the heart. "He sounds so sincere."

Pittet's classmate Luca Wullschteger could not but agree. "I came thinking it will be like hearing another politician. But Dr. Kalam was different. It is nice to see a man of science in such a high position."

The faculty, too, were impressed, though they said it was more like a general science lecture. Dr. K.R. Thampi, a senior scientist at the Nanotechnology Department, said: "As a politician he has to link science to politics. I'm sure that he would have been even more impressive if he had been speaking on rocketry."

Added Mohammad K. Nazeeruddin: "He is quite, you know, charming. It was a good speech and so unusual coming from the president of a country."

Thampi had the last word: "Don't compare him to another scientist. Compare him to George Bush. Can he speak as well on the subjects that Kalam spoke on?"